be to represent Lear. The greatness of Lear is not in corporal dimension, but in intellectual; the explosions of his passions are terrible as a volcano: they are storms turning up and disclosing to the bottom that rich sea, his mind, with all its vast riches. It is his mind which is laid bare. This case of flesh and blood seems too insignificant to be thought on; even as he himself neglects it. On the stage we see nothing but corporal infirmities and weakness, the impotence of rage; while we read it, we see not Lear, but we are Lear; we are in his mind; we are sustained by a grandeur, which baffles the malice of daughters and storms; in the aberrations of his reason, we discover a mighty irregular power of reasoning, immethodised from the ordinary purposes of life, but exerting its powers, as the wind blows where it listeth, at will on the corruptions and abuses of mankind. What have looks or tones to do with that sublime identification of his age with that of the heavens themselves, when in his reproaches to them for conniving at the injustice of his children, he reminds them that "they themselves are old!" What gesture shall we appropriate to this? What has the voice or the eye to do with such things? But the play is beyond all art, as the tamperings with it shew: it is too hard and stony: it must have love-scenes, and a happy ending. It is not enough that Cordelia is a daughter, she must shine as a lover too. Tate has put his hook in the nostrils of this Leviathan, for Garrick and his followers, the shewmen of the scene, to draw it about more easily. A happy ending!-as if the living martyrdom that Lear had gone through,-the flaying of his feelings alive, did not make a fair dismissal from the stage of life the only decorous thing for him. If he is to live and be happy after, if he could sustain this world's burden after, why all this pudder and preparation—why torment us with all this unnecessary sympathy? As if the childish pleasure of getting his gilt robes and sceptre again could tempt him to act over again his misused station, as if at his years and with his experience, any thing was left but to die.'1 Four things have struck us in reading LEAR: 1. That poetry is an interesting study, for this reason, that it relates to whatever is most interesting in human life. Whoever therefore has a contempt for poetry, has a contempt for himself and humanity. 2. That the language of poetry is superior to the language of painting; because the strongest of our recollections relate to feelings, not to faces. 3. That the greatest strength of genius is shewn in describing the strongest passions: for the power of the imagination, in works of invention, must be in proportion to the force of the natural impressions, which are the subject of them. 4. That the circumstance which balances the pleasure against the 1 See an article, called Theatralia, in the second volume of the Reflector, by Charles Lamb. pain in tragedy is, that in proportion to the greatness of the evil, is our sense and desire of the opposite good excited; and that our sympathy with actual suffering is lost in the strong impulse given to our natural affections, and carried away with the swelling tide of passion, that gushes from and relieves the heart. RICHARD II. RICHARD II. is a play little known compared with Richard III. anguish, is the lot of humanity, and we sympathize with him accordingly. The sufferings of the man make us forget that he ever was a king. The right assumed by sovereign power to trifle at its will with the happiness of others as a matter of course, or to remit its exercise as a matter of favour, is strikingly shewn in the sentence of banishment so unjustly pronounced on Bolingbroke and Mowbray, and in what Bolingbroke says when four years of his banishment are taken off, with as little reason. 'How long a time lies in one little word! Four lagging winters and four wanton springs A more affecting image of the loneliness of a state of exile can hardly be given than by what Bolingbroke afterwards observes of his having sighed his English breath in foreign clouds'; or than that conveyed in Mowbray's complaint at being banished for life. The language I have learned these forty years, And now my tongue's use is to me no more Or like a cunning instrument cas'd up, Or being open, put into his hands That knows no touch to tune the harmony. I am too old to fawn upon a nurse, Too far in years to be a pupil now.' How very beautiful is all this, and at the same time how very English too! RICHARD II. may be considered as the first of that series of English historical plays, in which is hung armour of the invincible knights of old,' in which their hearts seem to strike against their coats of mail, where their blood tingles for the fight, and words are but the harbingers of blows. Of this state of accomplished barbarism the appeal of Bolingbroke and Mowbray is an admirable specimen. Another of these keen encounters of their wits,' which serve to whet the talkers' swords, is where Aumerle answers in the presence of Bolingbroke to the charge which Bagot brings against him of being an accessory in Gloster's death. VOL. 1. S 'Fitzwater. If that thy valour stand on sympathies, 273 That thou wert cause of noble Gloster's death. Aumerle. Thou dar'st not, coward, live to see the day. And that thou art so, there I throw my gage Who sets me else? By heav'n, I'll throw at all. To answer twenty thousand such as you. Surry. My lord Fitzwater, I remember well The very time Aumerle and you did talk. Fitzwater. My lord, 'tis true: you were in presence then : And you can witness with me, this is true. Surry. As false, by heav'n, as heav'n itself is true. Fitzwater. Surry, thou liest. Surry. Dishonourable boy, That lie shall lye so heavy on my sword, That it shall render vengeance and revenge, Till thou the lie-giver and that lie rest In earth as quiet as thy father's skull. In proof whereof, there is mine honour's pawn: Engage it to the trial, if thou dar'st. Fitzwater. How fondly dost thou spur a forward horse : If I dare eat or drink, or breathe or live, I dare meet Surry in a wilderness, And spit upon him, whilst I say he lies, And lies, and lies: there is my bond of faith, To tie thee to thy strong correction. As I do hope to thrive in this new world, How The truth is, that there is neither truth nor honour in all these noble persons: they answer words with words, as they do blows with blows, in mere self defence: nor have they any principle whatever but that of courage in maintaining any wrong they dare commit, or any falsehood which they find it useful to assert. different were these noble knights and 'barons bold' from their more refined descendants in the present day, who, instead of deciding questions of right by brute force, refer everything to convenience, fashion, and good breeding! In point of any abstract love of truth or justice, they are just the same now that they were then. The characters of old John of Gaunt and of his brother York, uncles to the King, the one stern and foreboding, the other honest, good-natured, doing all for the best, and therefore doing nothing, are well kept up. The speech of the former, in praise of England, is one of the most eloquent that ever was penned. We should perhaps hardly be disposed to feed the pampered egotism of our countrymen by quoting this description, were it not that the conclusion of it (which looks prophetic) may qualify any improper degree of exultation. 'This royal throne of kings, this sceptered isle, This fortress built by nature for herself This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England, This land of such dear souls, this dear dear land, The character of Bolingbroke, afterwards Henry iv. is drawn with a masterly hand :-patient for occasion, and then steadily availing himself of it, seeing his advantage afar off, but only seizing on it when he has it within his reach, humble, crafty, bold, and aspiring, encroaching by regular but slow degrees, building power on opinion, and cementing opinion by power. His disposition is first unfolded |